Thursday, May 9, 2013

Danger Lights - 1930 - National Train Day

“Danger Lights” (1930) is an offbeat amalgam of an Arthurian
love triangle and a nuts-and-bolts industrial film.Never before, or again, I suppose, has a
gritty steam locomotive or grimy rail yard lit up the silver screen with such
erotic passion.

This Saturday, May 11,
2013, marks Amtrak's National Train Day here in the U.S., and this is our annual tribute
to the iron horse in the movies.

To be sure, the train is the star in this show, but it’s
supporting players, mere mortals, round out the cast nicely.Louis Wolheim plays the manager of a Midwest
train yard, a great bear of a man who barks orders, beats up hoboes, but with a
gentle side he shows to those in trouble.Unless they’re hoboes.

Robert Armstrong, who we love in “King Kong” (1933) here,
and I think last saw in “Dive Bomber” (1941), plays a smart-aleck ex-engineer
down on his luck, currently riding the rails with the hoboes.He’s a feisty troublemaker, but Mr. Wolheim,
after punching Mr. Armstrong’s lights out, gives him a job in these early
Depression days, and puts him on the road to redemption.And romance with his girl.

Wolheim’s girl is the much younger Jean Arthur, fresh-faced
and lovely as the doting daughter of a railroad man who can no longer work because
of an injury.Louis Wolheim took them in
and looked after them when Jean was a growing girl, and now that she’s grown,
he intends to marry her.Until Robert
Armstrong complicates matters.

Frank Sheridan is Jean’s da, who is more in love with his
benefactor Wolheim than is shy and diffident Jean.Mr. Sheridan praises Wolheim to the skies,
constantly hammers into Jean what they owe to him, and practically prostitutes
his daughter for the sake of paying an old debt.

Hugh Herbert has a small but memorable role as a hobo with
delusions of grandeur.

We start the movie with a shot of the engine face-on,
barreling towards us.Many shots have us
placed on top of the locomotive or on the coal car facing forward, looking over
the locomotive to the track ahead of us as if we are riding the shoulders of a
great beast. We enjoy the sensation
of movement in this film, the thrill of a fast ride, over
narrow trestles placed across deep river gorges, snaking around hillsides and
cutting through winding valleys.It
reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s poem, I
like to see it lap the miles:

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop--docile and omnipotent--
At its own stable door.

The movie was shot on location in the upper Midwest, much of
it at Miles City, Montana, and also in Chicago.

Louis Wolheim was about 50 when this film was released (he
died the following year), and was known for his beat-up mug that got bashed in
when he played college football.The
story has it that Lionel Barrymore helped him out and advised him to try
theater, that his ugly mug—or rather, his face would be his fortune, as they
say.He was a success on Broadway in
Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape among
other hits, and when Hollywood called, this urbane, multilingual former college
math teacher made a career of playing Neanderthal palookas.

It’s an interesting aspect of old movies that the real age
of the actors is often ignored, as it is in the case of Jean Arthur, who here
plays a much younger woman.In real
life, she was 29 years old with already probably 50 or 60 silent films under
her belt.Robert Armstrong is 40 in real
life, hardly the up-and-coming hotshot youth he’s playing. However, Wolheim’s age, in real life 21 years
older than Jean, is brought to our attention and is used truthfully and most
poignantly in scenes where we see her discomfort at being pressured into a love
match with man to whom she is very grateful, but does not love.

Jean Arthur, far from the sassy roles that would be her
trademark in the coming decade, here delicately plays a troubled woman caught
in painful dilemma.She is passive, but no
less gutsy for being quiet about it, and she grabs our attention for her very
stillness in scenes where Wolheim is blustering, Armstrong is chewing the
scenery, and Sheridan is making with the silent movie techniques of agony
expressed in a claw-like hand clench.She is the still waters running deep.

Wolheim’s character is presented to us in ways that
keep us off balance.First, he is a
work-obsessed tyrant in the rail yard, “We got to keep the trains moving.That’s our religion.”He clobbers people who are slow to do what he
tells them.We may grow tired of Papa
Sheridan’s constant praising Wolheim to Herculean status, particularly as we
see Jean beaten down by that praise, flinching with guilt because she doesn’t
love him.Wolheim’s tenderness comes out
when comforting a fellow railroad man whose wife has just died.It’s a fine scene, and though we may suffer
for Jean, we cannot deny that Wolheim is a good man.A man everyone looks up to, but whose own
love for Jean, though certainly genuine, is expressed with all the passion of
patting a dog on the head.

But Wolheim unwittingly keeps putting Robert Armstrong and
Jean Arthur together.He sends Jean down
to the roundhouse with a message for Armstrong, where she meets him for the
first time. A lovely shot where Armstrong watches her walk away, delicately stepping across tracks, from the darkness of the roundhouse to the light-filled rail yard.

Wolheim invites Armstrong to
dinner at the house he shares with Jean and her father, and there is a meet
cute with Jean bringing the squalling Armstrong a towel when he has soap in his
eyes.Wolheim is unable to take Jean to
a company picnic, so he directs Armstrong to do it.Finally, at the house party where he
announces his upcoming wedding to Jean (Jean looks surprised and slightly sick), Wolheim pushes Armstrong to dance with
her.

Robert Armstrong and Jean Arthur begin to fall for each
other, but knowing the arrangement with Wolheim, each is careful not to express
their love, both feel guilty, both owing something to Wolheim, and both
miserable.

That the railroad is part of their forbidden courtship, used as a kind of metaphor to illustrate their passion, is
fascinating.At the company picnic, a nighttime
affair, Jean and Armstrong watch breathlessly, awed, in the crowd as
two locomotives have a kind of tug of war demonstration to see which is the
more powerful.Plumes of steam huff from
the engines and sparks light up the night.

When he walks her home, they take a route through the
countryside that brings them across a narrow train trestle perched high above a
gorge.The breeze billows her dress as
they walk, stepping gingerly over the railroad ties.It is a leisurely, adventuresome stroll,
testing each other’s company.Then,
horror at a moment’s notice, they hear an approaching train whistle and see a
light piercing the tunnel ahead of them.Armstrong pulls Jean to the side where there is a outcropping platform
for just such emergencies.The train
barrels past them, inches away, and the wake of night air whips Jean’s dress
and her hair.Mr. Armstrong’s hair stays
nicely put, but then that is what a gallon of Brilliantine will do.

The power, the rumble of the train makes the trestle shake
beneath their feet, and they suddenly, passionately kiss.
Such is the orgasmic excitement when a speeding train passes within 18 inches of you. So it would seem.

When the train has passed and all is quiet, Armstrong pulls
away from her and walks quickly away, leaving her there, bewildered and
breathless.We see he feels like a heel.

These scenes, by the way, are all location shooting.The realism is stunning in an era where we
are used to seeing more storybook-type controlled environments.

Another great romantic train shot is when Armstrong, at the
controls of a train, glances out the window.We see from our vantage point on the roof of the locomotive, that it
slides by a few old houses built near the tracks. (As Emily Dickinson might say: "And, supercilious, peer in shanties by the sides of roads...") One is the house where Jean and her father
live.Next, we are inside the house, and
Jean is silhouetted against the open windows facing the track.Again, the train creates a breeze, even from
this distance, sifts through her hair and, quietly captivated, she watches the
train slide by.Armstrong blows his
whistle, like a mating call.

By the way, he’s pulling a dynamometer car, which is a
maintenance car used for measuring a locomotive’s power and speed, etc., and it’s
been noted on IMDb and Wikipedia that this is likely the only film in existence
of a dynamometer carfor a steam
locomotive of this era.

If you’re not as thrilled by that as I am, I don’t want to
talk to you.

Mr. Armstrong and Miss Arthur eventually get around to
spilling their guts and telling each other how much in love they are, but in
the most miserable and guilty fashion. (They
are both half-lying across her bed when this scene takes place, a little pre-Code
teasing.)

When a track washout pulls Wolheim away from their engagement party,
Armstrong and Jean decide to run away.

It’s raining, pouring, like a Capra movie (only the director
here is George B. Seitz and I love how beautifully he films this movie).Jean and Armstrong, pummeled by the torrent,
trudge along the tracks (apparently it never occurs to them to walk on a
sidewalk), their raincoats shiny in the warning lights along the track.Danger Lights.

Armstrong gets his foot caught in a rail switch, and wouldn’t
you know it?A train is coming.

There’s a few frantic moments, and then Wolheim catches up
to them.Jean’s da discovered their
hanky-panky and squeals to Wolheim, who has arrived with the intention of killing
Armstrong.No need of course, the
oncoming train will do that in a matter of moments.

But as we said previously, Wolheim is really a good guy
underneath, and he wrestles Armstrong out of the way in time, only to be hit
by the train himself.Or rather, the dummy
dressed to look like him is graphically plowed over.

If you’re not squeamish about that, then you’re surely not
squeamish about spoilers.It’s a little late
for that anyway.

However, I’ll spare you the ending, except to say that it involves
a high-speed mission of mercy to get Wolheim to the medical specialists in
Chicago in time.Armstrong drives the
train, and we get a breakneck ride ourselves.It’s a real treat to find ourselves tearing all over the Milwaukee Road
until we at last pull into the yard at Chicago, and even get a few nice interior
shots of Union Station.

Let me end with a reminder that train travel is the most
economic and environmentally friendly way to move people across this great
nation of ours.Make your next trip by
train.Maybe Robert Armstrong will be at
the controls.

I'll be speaking at the Chicopee Historical Society, meeting at the Chicopee
Public Library, Chicopee, Massachusetts on Thursday, May 16th with a PowerPoint presentation about
topics from my recently published States of Mind: New England. That
book will be available for sale at this event. Also available in paperback here from CreateSpace.

It was great. I have to say I love those early sound movies that are so close to the preceding era, silent techniques are still in use.

What words would be better than their faces when Larry learns Mary is Dan Thorn's intended? and we get to linger there ... in silence the bite is deeper.

The visual and the hearing are two different levels of perception and one has to pay close attention during silence

I actually found Dan more attractive than Larry...until there was, as you pointed out, no passion from Dan. It was all for the railroad. Larry had vastly more of the needed caveman impulse Mary was waiting for and won her( even thought the caveman stuff would not of won Mary for Dan...there would at least be some passion for her)

I found it interesting Larry was older than a "kid" as Dan kept calling him...because it was like Mary and this job Dan got him was his last best chance etc. heightening the drama

About the steam engines...Mother of Peal! I wasn't a big fab when the film stated, but wow I love 'em now

CMBA Award 2014

Facebook

Four towns...vanished.

Based on an actual event, the story of four towns in Massachusetts dismantled, a population evicted and scattered.

A quick trip to New Zealand...

A bumbling American woman retraces her mother's past in this comic, poignant adventure.

DISMOUNT and MURDER

Third in the Double V Mysteries series is now available in eBook and paperback. Elmer and Juliet continue their rocky relationship while investigating murder at a wealthy estate in Litchfield, Connecticut, in the summer of 1950, while a horse show on the grounds covers the tracks of a number of suspects. Elmer, an ex-convict, is now off parole, the Korean War has just started, and television antennas are starting to spring up on rooftops all over the place. It's the dawn of new, unsettling day.

MORE books!

Read Arte Acher's Falling Circus

Recent Comments on Past Posts:

My wife and I go back two decades for our love of “Remember the Night” and its heartwarming story...P.S. As I type these words I am reminded of the inscription my wife had engraved inside the wedding ring I now wear… “Remember The Night.”

Beautiful piece, Jacqueline, about yet another movie from the Unjustly Forgotten file. I agree a video release is decades overdue, (What is wrong with Universal Home Video? You'd think the only movies they ever made were monsters and Abbott & Costello. And don't even get me started on the pre-'48 Paramounts they're sitting on.) I count myself lucky to have scored a decent 16mm print on eBay some years back; otherwise it would have been a good 40 years since I saw it.

I happened upon this piece and wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed reading it. Really a great appreciation of a wonderful movie. Raoul Walsh is one of my favorite directors and this is the first of his movies I ever remember seeing--it was on the big screen back in 1952 so I guess that dates me but a movie like this was ideal for my age, both for the adventure and romance.

I guess I'm going to be busy reading all your blogs that touch on events I'm familiar with.

Judgement At Nuremberg caught my attention as I had the privilege of working in it for some 60 days. But more so as the German WWII history always recall my own trials during the war.

I suppose we filmed this around 1959-1960 which is not that long after the ending of the war. Reconstruction in Europe was far from accomplished. For the audience in 1961 this history was still a part of everyone's life.

I was overwhelmed sitting in that set and listening to the greatest actors of that generation orate day after day... an endless live theater.

vienna said... Jacqueline, I've adored this film for many years and have thought of reviewing it. But your post is SO good, I know I could never do it the same justice. I love it because of Jean Arthur who made only a very few dramas. I always wanted her to do more serious roles in addition to her comedies. She really can break your heart. I'm not a Boyer fan but he is good. Colin Clive does a great job.. He is so odious and obsessed, even when Irene makes her feelings extremely clear. You describe everything so well and remind me I need to watch it again. Surely we will get a DVD release soon. I love your phrase - thank heavens for headlines!January 18, 2014

Ed Long said...I was doing a search on Google looking for Robin Corey whose father was Wendell Corey. She and I were in an acting class in the summer of 1960 at La Jolla Playhouse. At that time, the Playhouse was on Nautilus. Robert Mulligan was the director as I recall. Wendell was appearing in a play that summer at the Playhouse. He was also in the audience when our theatre troupe put on a performance for our friends and family at the end of the summer training.December 11, 2013

Ginevra Di Verduno said...Maybe I'm biased, being a convinced Leslie Howard's fan, but "Berkeley Square" is still one of my favorite films, and any comparison is just impossible. Though Leslie Howard wasn't the first Peter Standish (the play had already been produced in London, in 1926), this role was undoubtedly one of his most celebrated creations. His production of 1929 was an immense success. The film version, of course, cannot reproduce the magical atmosphere surrounding his stage presence, which entranced audience and critics. "Berkeley Square" is a classic "filmed play" of the early Thirties; it's quite static, its photography is unimaginative. But Leslie Howard's skill and charm still shine in splendor. October 31, 2013